I have run into a frustrating situation in the development of my site/store. I am using the Shopp plugin and there is a disconnect between the tags in WP and the tags in the store plugin. In my case I have both articles with tags and products with tags. I do not want them in the same tag cloud but I do want tag clouds of both categories. While this discrete issue is solvable with tools that already exist...

It started me thinking that many situations would benefit from a tag cloud that was definable directly to a db field. This would allow rapid addition of tags and the ability to have multiple tag clouds on a site that perform radically different functions. Has this already been solved? For most users to use it would need to be an easily used plugin. If one could define a set of tags by the content of a mysql field you could have a tag cloud for about anything.

@RealityCramp - I have read your question several times and while I think I understand what you might be asking I'm at a loss regarding the details. Can you please rephrase your question?
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MikeSchinkelSep 1 '10 at 2:18

Tried to make the wanderings of a distracted mind a bit more comprehensible... ;-)
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RealityCrampSep 1 '10 at 2:37

@RealityCramp - The update definitely helped, at least in the first paragraph, but I'm still stumped by the phrase " a tag cloud that was definable directly to a db field"; not sure exactly what you want there.
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MikeSchinkelSep 1 '10 at 2:39

I guess I am thinking too much in terms of product inventory. In this case I think of condition, color, weight, type, brand all as seperate db fields in a product list. Tag clouds of each would be helpful in certain situations. In addition to that you could create a table that included all your posts and have varying tags associated with each post. This would be handy for international blogs(tags by visiting country), or different clouds by user type. You could also have separate tags for differing searches. It seems the flexibility could be helpful in my mind.
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RealityCrampSep 1 '10 at 2:55

1 Answer
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Check out the function wp_generate_tag_cloud() in wp-includes/category-template.php. It's not database-specific, you would just query your table and format the data for wp_generate_tag_cloud(). I'm unable to post sample code tonight, but I'll check back on this question tomorrow and post an example if no one else has done so.